360° Coverage: Sleepy Hollow Recap: Lonely Island

Sleepy Hollow Recap: Lonely Island

Oct 14 2013, 11:00pm CDT | by TV Line

Photo Credit: TV Line

A mysterious young boy turns up in Sleepy Hollow this week, and before you know it, lots of people are sick. (Kids = germ factories, am I right?) But when Ichabod falls ill, too, it takes no less than Abbie, Katrina-in-limbo and a very old ghost settlement to put things right again. Before the creeping black veins of badness are too far gone, let’s review what happened in “John Doe.”

BOY WONDER | This week’s main plot follows Thomas, a young boy dressed in old garb who runs into Sleepy Hollow and passes out. Ichabod tags along when Abbie is called to the scene, and that’s where he realizes that the boy speaks Middle English. As in Middle Ages. As in, maybe Crane’s not the only time-transplant in town. (Of course Ichabod studied the tongue at Oxford and can therefore converse with the kid; I’m waiting for the week when a language comes up in the investigation and he’s like, “I got nothing.”)

Aside from being very freaked out, Thomas is also suffering from some kind of ailment that’s turning his veins black. Soon, many of the people who’ve come into contact with him are sick, too, leading to an Outbreak-type situation at the local hospital.

WALK ON THE WATER | Abbie and Ichabod, working off the fact that Thomas said he was from Roanoke, make a spectacular leap that he’s not from the town in Virginia – he’s from Roanoke Island, N.C., otherwise known as a community whose entire population vanished off the face of the Earth between 1587 and 1590. As the duo find out when they go looking in the forest, that community – untouched by the march of time — is now located on a small island off a wooded trail in Sleepy Hollow. (Both of them literally walk on water to get there, a slight tie to the faith theme raised later in the episode.) The horseman of pestilence (one of headless’ buds) tried to decimate the population, leaving everyone there veiny, too, but not sick… because the ghost of a little girl lead them to the island for protection. (I realize that last sentence reads as though it were strung together by a teenager who’s a little too excited about Magic: The Gathering, and I apologize.)

Anyway, Abchabod realize they have to bring Thomas back to the island to stem the spread of the disease and to thwart pestilence’s reunion with his headless bro in Sleepy Hollow. But Ichabod succumbs to the sickness and is put in isolation, where he dreams that he encounters Katrina in a purgatory ruled by Moloch. They kiss, but he’s distracted by wondering what Moloch wants with the redhead’s soul. Before she can tell him, he’s yanked back to reality, where Abbie and Capt. Irving conspire to get Thomas and Crane back to Roanoke.

A DUNK’LL DO YA | The trio almost doesn’t make it; Abbie has to give Ichabod an adrenaline injection just to help him keep walking (“I like it!” he replies. Ha.) and, in a line sure to make all of the fanvids, she tells him, “I cannot make it without you.” Aw. All three of them arrive at Roanoke just in time for Ichabod to submerge himself and Thomas in the central well, curing themselves of the plague and vanquishing the swiftly advancing horseman of pestilence. Everyone else who’s in town is similarly cured.

But wait! Where did the good folk of Roanoke go? Vanished right before Ichabod and Abbie’s eyes; they were never there, you see. Thomas “was dead all along. They all were,” Ichabod says, and don’t think too hard about that because what’s really important here is that Abbie took an uncharacteristic leap. “Your faith in being one of the witnesses allowed you to see what your eyes could not,” Ichabod tells her proudly. Um, dude? She’s been carting your Revolutionary rear around for weeks now and she petitioned God on your behalf; I think the girl is capable of freeing her mind from time to time. They exchange a BIG LOOK as she tells him that even though she knew he was more comfortable among the ancient islanders, “You belong in Sleepy Hollow in the here and now.”

Lest we forget why we’re all here, Headless climbs out of the river later that night to find his hellish steed waiting for him. More badness is coming, Abchabod!

SUSPICIOUS MINDS | Luke still doesn’t like Ichabod, and he doesn’t listen when the captain tells him to leave the matter alone. (Did you notice the stinkeye Abbie’s ex was giving the two in the background when they were at her desk? Even when you’ve got chiseled cheekbones and 2 percent body fat, jealousy ain’t sexy, Luke. ) But when the suspicious officer phones Oxford, a woman with a really fake-sounding British accent vouches for Crane. (Got thoughts as to who was on the other end of the line? Sound off in the comments.)

• Ichabod’s going to live in the sheriff’s cabin.
• Abbie’s comment “You look good for 200, but a change of clothes wouldn’t hurt” makes it seem like the shopping trip so many of you want will soon come to pass.
• Ichabod comes from money; we learn his father was a nobleman and that young Master Crane learned to track on fox hunts – though he seems to view his “regal” upbringing with some disdain
• The way Tom Mison has Ichabod say “spackle”
• The teasing way Nichole Beharie delivers, “You know, you can admit when you don’t know what a word means”
• The Ichabod interacts with a loofah puff and Scotch tape – I know this kind of thing may get old one day, but today is not that day, so bring it on, Sleepy Hollow./>/>/>/>/>

Now it’s your turn. What did you think of the episode? (Remember, it’s three weeks until the next new one.) Sound off in the comments!